Nix Fatalis
by Visvissy
Summary: In the grim dark future there is only war - and it's full of bad decisions. Nix, the only survivor of her unit, finds herself shell-shocked and in the midst of a planetary crisis when she returns to her regiment. As tensions build between the various factions within the Imperial Guard, Nix is forced to return to the site of her nightmares... where she makes a chilling discovery.
1. Chapter 1

Little twigs brushed and bent against my skin as I ran. The sun arched over me, fingers of light stabbing through a parasol of tree-tops to cast skittering shadows on the ground, but in my head it was all just a blur - like a daydream. I couldn't feel my right arm anymore; my blood had seeped through the cloth and clotted long since. I acknowledged in some remote corner of my mind that I'd been lucky to escape alive, but the horror of my survival would not let me dwell on that for long. And so I kept running.

There was no wind in the forest. I hadn't believed that before, not before I'd been forced to accept it. The others hadn't reacted so well - Tara had laughed it off as if it were a joke, probably thinking it just a coincidence. I knew better. I knew what wrongness smelled like, and this forest stunk of it like a battlefield stunk of corpses.

My arms and legs were a mess of scratches, but I hardly even noticed. I ran ever further, knowing that those _things_ could not be far behind me. Even now, I kept waiting for that creeping chill to settle into my spine, just like I still half-expected a breeze to rise up from the mountains to remind me that this was simply a forest like any other. How could there be air, but no wind? It was unnatural. Just like everything else here.

Tara had been the first to go. Of course she'd felt the same wrongness as I had - you always did in the end. Despite that, she'd held her position. Wanted to fend them off. More fool her, I'd told myself at the time, but maybe that had been the better way to go. The image of one of those dread masks, like metallic skulls, flashed across my eyes again. No, running had been the right choice. The others had stayed behind - even Ludvig. I felt bitter pain stabbing me through the heart at the thought. He'd stabbed me in the back with that one, caught me completely off-guard. Why stay with her? It was a petty thought, of course. A thought that meant I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings.  
The air was punched out of my lungs as I felt my boot snagging on a root. I only felt the tiniest moment of panic before the rocky, root-covered earth rushed up to meet my head.

I blinked. The memory of a smiling face beckoned at me to pay attention, but I blinked again - and again - until the image was gone from my mind. I didn't want to remember. The world felt all wrong, as if my sense of direction had been turned upside-down or perhaps on its side. I could distantly feel the soft soil that had cushioned my fall covering my face, and with a start I noted the rock right next to my head. Had I just fallen an inch to the right, I would've-

Suddenly I remembered. I tried to stand up, but my senses were all wrong. I flopped on my side, kicking up soil as a pounding headache threatened to launch me back into unconsciousness. My breath came shallowly through my mouth - something felt wrong with my nose.

"Where am I?" I asked the shadows. My voice sounded so weak.

That was when I seemed to wake up. I remembered my mission, my comrades. They'd sent an entire battalion to search this area. All for just a rumour about the rebels. I'd wondered about that, back then, but Ludvig had told me to zip it just in case. You didn't want to give the wrong impression, lest they reprimand you for insubordination. None of that mattered now, did it? Not when they were all gone. My entire squad, some of them my friends all the way back from the Schola. The pain of their loss washed over me again. Just how many times did I have to relive this for the pain to fade away?

I blinked away the nightmarish images and picked myself up from the ground. My head had cleared enough for me to rise, if on somewhat wobbly feet, and take in my surroundings again. If I had learned anything during my short but colourful career as a lowly Guardswoman, it was that paying attention was often your best weapon.

I resumed my trudge through the woods, too exhausted to keep running. I might as well have been sprinting for hours, the endless adrenaline coursing through my veins being the only thing that had still kept me going. Now, I could only take one step after another and hope against hope that those monsters hadn't made their way past the tunnel entrance yet. I could picture that pale green glow behind the rubble, slowly tearing through stone, or slipping through like ghosts. I'd heard a distant explosion some time ago, which I thought must've been the last of the explosives we'd packed along. There was no telling if that had been enough to collapse the tunnel, or whether or not that would be enough to stop the metallic things in the first place, but it beat the alternatives. All of which involved a flash of green light and eternal silence.

Several hours had passed since I'd knocked my head on the soil. The shadows had deepened and stretched around me until I could barely see in front of me, but I couldn't stop walking. My entire body was trembling, partly from the cold, partly from my wound, partly from the shock. I had lost whatever clarity of mind I'd managed to regain after waking up. Were those shapes I saw in the shadows, or was that just another game my mind had invented to keep itself busy? It felt like torture. Sometimes the shapes looked ghastly familiar, the faces of my friends taunting me from the shadows, and sometimes they looked like my comrades from the rest of the company looking for survivors. It was too much for me. I would've snapped long ago if it wasn't for that nagging thought at the back of my head, keeping me sane with the power of a broken promise. Survive for him.

I blinked my eyes as I suddenly stepped into a bright light. Had I had the strength, I would have raised a hand to shield my eyes from the glare of the lamplight. I knew what this place was. This was a guard post. I remembered long nights sitting in the shade, away from the light so as to not expose ourselves, chatting with Ludvig. We'd talked about this and that really, about inconsequential things, things that made us both happy. I didn't want to remember that, not now. It was too soon. I could weep later, when I had the heart for it, the strength.

But now, all I could do was take a few relieved steps forward, barely managing to stay upright now that I'd reached safety. A guard would already have noticed me. They'd pick me up, safe and sound… I'd pass out, only to wake up in a field tent, surrounded by the familiar rhythm of the military. I'd smile, knowing that at least for now, I was safe.

Which was when my foot stepped on something soft and squishy. That was when the coin dropped. After serving a few months as a guardswoman, you learned to recognize it. It became part of your thinking. The paranoia. And so even before I'd turned my head to look at what was below me, I already knew what I'd find there.

I staggered. I heard something sag; instinctively, I knew that it was the sound of my legs giving way before a weight they no longer had the strength to support. I fell on my knees and got my first good look at the thing I'd stepped on. I'd guessed its nature ever since first stepping on it, but seeing it in the flesh did not raise my spirits in the slightest. I recognized the insignia of a staff sergeant on the man's shoulders. Further on, more corpses littered the ground, some of them not ours. Those corpses did not look military, but they weren't those things either. So… cultists? Rebels? I felt my body sag even more and I tried to use the ground for support, but my arms - much like the rest of my body - had decided that they'd had enough abuse already. My head flopped onto the ground as my arms inevitably gave way before gravity. A voice at the back of my skull screamed for me to stay awake, to fight on and run from the horrors that roamed in the forests, but then a surge of nausea launched me firmly back into unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun was rising above the treetops in front of me when I stirred on the cold ground. I felt numb and weary to the bone, but for a blessed moment I didn't remember where I was or why. Then my gaze fell on the bodies surrounding me. Memory flooded back into me. I groaned.

It may surprise you to know that I felt disgusted by all of those bodies around me. I had grown up prowling in the blizzards of my home planet, after all. I'd killed my first greenskin by accident when I was twelve, and by thirteen I was a seasoned killer. But I wasn't a butcher. I killed with a las-shot from a distance, the further away the better. I had always resented those who preferred to wade into open melee with naught but their chainswords and bolt pistols to protect themselves with, or those who enjoyed the letting of blood. In my mind, only the Angels of Death could – or should, for that matter – do something like that, and as a rule I stayed as far away from them as I could.

In any case, I was now alone, surrounded by corpses and – surprisingly – I still felt good to go. Once I had cleared my head with more water, I made myself busy against my better judgment by investigating some of the corpses a little closer. I knew that I was running on a timer, but I had to gain some general picture of what had happened here.

After a minute or two of looking around – and picking up some unspoilt rations while I was at it – I managed to gather something like an idea of what had happened. Our company had been sent to the hills in pursuit of a band of heretics that, according to our scouts, had set up their base of operations there. They must've sent out scouts of their own, who had then stumbled upon a small Guard checkpoint and fought a fierce battle with its few defenders. I nodded to myself as I finished my vacuum-sealed rations. That sounded likely enough. Content with my self-rationalization for the moment, I set off.

Morning had crept all the way into late afternoon by the time I encountered another living human soul. I'd bagged myself two skinny rabbits along the way and spit-roasted both of them over a makeshift fire, so I wasn't feeling too hungry, but from the look on the sentry's face I must've seemed a ghost. He was approximately my age, a pale-skinned Valhallan whom I didn't recognize, but he ushered me through the camp perimeter and into the medical bay all the same. I didn't think much of it at the time, though in hindsight maybe I should've been more attentive.

"Name and unit?" the tired-looking medic in charge of the place asked me matter-of-factly.

"Nix Celeris. I was a Guardswoman…" I fumbled over the words as a wave of nausea struck me. "… serving under Sergeant Takmin of the 117th Valhallans. Our unit was wiped out in combat. I am the only survivor."

The medic narrowed his eyes, but other than that, there was no sign of acknowledgment in his demeanor to what I'd said. It was only then that it occurred to me to amend what I'd said. Only that before the words made it out of my mouth, the medic's eyes flickered to somewhere behind me and he rose halfway from his seat to extend a hand in greeting.

"Ah, Commissar. I was expecting you. I believe this case falls under your jurisdiction." As he spoke, his cold eyes passed over me. It was the moment of realization for me. As I felt his unmasked hatred wash over me, I became very aware of the circumstances of my arrival. Many of the dead had friends all over the Regiment. Our unit had gone missing fighting traitors. And here I was, the lonely, unknown survivor…

It would've been an understatement to say that I suddenly felt very, very afraid.

"Thank you most kindly, corporal." The Commissar intoned, ignoring the proffered hand. The medic gave one final salute and made his exit swiftly, seemingly glad to be away from the commissar's presence. I couldn't blame him for that, at least. Nevertheless, I could only stare blankly as the Commissar slowly rounded the table and sat down opposite of me with a sense of finality that, if possible, made me feel even more uncomfortable. His gaze bored into my skull.

"Trooper Celeris." He paused, as if expecting me to reply. I remained silent. I could guess where this was going, and speaking would only make it worse.

He smacked his lips thoughtfully. "Your unit's orders were to find and destroy a rebel base, were they not?"

I swiftly decided against my vow of silence. Maybe I'd misjudged the situation.

"Yes, sir."

"I am told that you failed in that mission."

That was a lie. I knew it, and I knew that he knew it. I looked up at him, about to spit his words right back at him – but then I saw his smile. It was a bland, humorless smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. I knew that I'd been about to do exactly what he wanted. And so I bit down on my lower lip and stayed silent.

"But not only did you fail to perform your orders, you strayed from the mission at hand."

My heart skipped a step as my thoughts returned to the ruins of that base. To the green light our scout had glimpsed in a cave uphill. He couldn't know about it. He just _couldn't._

"Oh, yes. I know that you abandoned your mission and ran away in fear. It was your fault that the mission failed, was it not?"

I looked up at him in confusion. They had not been the words I'd feared. But they were words I hadn't expected to hear, either.

The commissar was a young man, shockingly young for one of his status in fact, with wavy blonde hair stuffed under his oversized commissar's cap. His eyes were cold and emotionless. Something about them sent a chill running down my spine.

There must've been something he didn't like in my expression just then, because he reached into his coat and pulled out a las-pistol in one smooth motion, placing it on the table between us. His tone remained as even and calm as it had been since he'd arrived. Something about it – how toneless and devoid of emotion it was - made chills run down my spine.

"Most commissars would have had you in front of the firing squad already. You should be thankful that my methods are not as crude."

Suddenly, pieces of the puzzle came together in my head. His regiment had suffered hefty losses in combat. Someone in charge must've been looking for someone to blame. I was to be his scapegoat. He wanted me to confess to a crime he knew I didn't commit – and he wanted me to do so quickly. I forced myself to look into his eyes. I stubbornly kept silent.

The silence lasted for a long time.

The commissar sighed. "Very well. If you won't speak, my hands are tied." The way he said it, pretending innocence, made my skin crawl. Then he suddenly clapped his hands together.

"Your execution will be arranged for tomorrow morning. Make yourself presentable." He rose from his seat and, leaving the las-pistol on the table as if to mock me. I heard the tent flaps rustle as he left.

I stared at the pistol, stunned. Someone was giving orders outside, but the words sounded muffled to me. I felt someone force me up and cuff my hands behind my back, but I felt numb. I hardly offered any resistance, which perhaps more than anything spoke for just how shocked I was. My _execution?_ After all the things I'd gone through to get here? Just because some whelp of a commissar straight from the Schola didn't want to take responsibility?

By the time they threw me into the detainment bunker, I was half-seething with rage and half-stunned by my imminent execution. And I was afraid, deathly afraid. As I heard the door slam shut, I was already hyperventilating. Suppressed memories of phantoms with skeletal faces swam in my head, now and then flickering into the sneering face of a blonde commissar. I slowly curled myself up against the far corner of my prison. I stayed there for a long while. I stayed there until the dead of night.


	3. Chapter 3

In the dead of night, the gaoler kicked me awake. The man said something in his thick, guttural accent that sounded like a curse and stepped aside. Light spilled into my cell. I scrambled back, convinced that they'd come for me before it was time to kill me, to torture me perhaps.

A slender, delicate hand extended towards me through the light, nails polished black, the skin smooth and pale.

"Guardswoman Nix Fatalis?" a voice said.

The reply formed on my lips as the shape of the woman resolved in my vision, my eyes getting slowly used to the increased light. The thought never took audible shape, however, as the woman interrupted me.

"You are her. That is good. Oh – don't be alarmed. I just read your surface thoughts."

I nodded numbly, briefly wondering if I was still asleep. Read my thoughts? But this all felt too real to be a mere dream.

"Who – what are you?"

"I am Lena Vendethiel. As for _what_ I am – you will find that out soon enough. For you see, I am here to grant you your freedom."

I swallowed. I couldn't think of what else to do than to take the woman's hand. But as I grabbed it, I couldn't keep the suspicion from getting the better of me. "Why?"

Someone behind the woman spoke up. The light was so bright that I could hardly see him. "Because you're the only survivor of the Rathalas incident."

Rathalas. I swallowed again. So they'd already given it a name. What else did they know?

The woman pulled me up from the ground. "Guardswoman. I can read your anxiety and your stress, but I need you to tell me what you remember of the incident. _Every. Last. Detail._ "

"I…"

"Not here. Elsewhere. This place is…"

The very ground beneath us trembled as something massive exploded far above us, above-ground.

"This base is under heavy assault. We had to force our way in here – I lost several stormtroopers in the process. I'm no longer sure if anywhere on this planet is safe…"

Then she pulled me after her. I numbly took in my surroundings. Blood-covered walls, the occasional body of a guardsman, and strange burn-marks that seemed oddly familiar to me. And holes. Massive holes in the iron walls, surrounded by rings of ash, like someone had taken a military-grade grenade launcher to them. I didn't know then what that meant. The scenery whizzed past me in a blur. I was too exhausted to do much else than stay with the strange woman and her retainers.

And then we were out in the moonlight. The sounds of battle got more and more distant as we ran from cover to cover, seemingly without thought, until finally we stopped at the edge of a clearing, in the shade of a large, ruined building. It might have once been the manor of some local nobleman, but now it was decrepit and broken, its walls covered in rebellious graffiti.

That was when the woman approached me again. She looked me in the eye, and something passed across her face. An emotion, perhaps.

"She is in shock. I wonder if she can even hear me."

I opened my mouth to speak. Something about the words irked me. I didn't want to be a burden.

"I-I can hear you."

The woman looked at me again. Her lips curved into a slight smile. "So you can."

She crouched down opposite of me. "I will be frank with you, Nix Fatalis. I know that you are in shock, but I need you to snap out of it."

I yelped as if someone had slapped me on the cheek or thrown a bucket of cold water on me. My vision cleared. I was lying on the ground with my back against the wall. My lasgun was nowhere to be seen. I was alive.

"W-who are you?"

The woman smiled. "I am Lena Vendethiel of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition. Ordo Xenos, to be precise. Though I don't expect that means much to you."


	4. Chapter 4

Had I been of the more sensitive kind, I might have fainted when the Inquisitor revealed her true identity. But I was, and had always been, a practical woman. I opened my mouth to reply.

Only to leave it hanging open.

The sky was… the sky was no longer there. Or it was different, in a way that defied understanding. I gazed into an impossible mass of sickly clouds, teeming with unnatural energies, like a veil cast across the night sky. The moon leered at us like some kind of a predator. I shook with revulsion, placing my hands on my temples. It didn't feel good, looking at the sky. But somehow, it just… captured your attention.

"Don't look at the sky for too long," Lena warned. "Something terrible has happened. We've lost sight of Terra. We lost Karen… we lost our psyker in the backlash. I fear that Cadia has fallen. Abaddon's Black Crusade has succeeded. We are cut off. No doubt that is the reason for the rebellion on this planet, too…"

Cadia. Psykers. My vision began to spin. Nausea followed soon after. Cadia was the gold standard everything else was compared to in the Guard. It was the symbol of the entire organization, more than that, it embodied its spirit. And now… now Cadia had fallen? What hope was left, then?

"But all hope is not lost." The Inquisitor stood up and began to pace. "We can still resist. There's one thing we could try. It has to do with the reason why I landed on this planet in the first place. And it has to do with you."

Lena flicked her platinum hair, cut into a bob. The gesture seemed irritated. "The only problem is that we don't know anything for certain. Tell me, guardswoman. What happened to you during the Rathalas incident? Who – or what – befell on you during those few fateful hours?"

I took a deep breath. For calm. I wished I had something more potent – like a stiff drink – but I told myself I'd gotten through worse. In hindsight, it was comically false, but at the time it seemed to help me. Even if just a little. I thought back to that night three days ago.

"We were ordered to comb the Rathalas foothills for rebel encampments." It had been an intensive search, and fruitless for the better part of the day. Until my unit stumbled onto a tunnel entrance, cleverly hidden under foliage.

"We found an entrance. It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. Strange markings covered the walls." And then…

"We voxed headquarters for support. Another identical entrance had been found elsewhere." We waited at the entrance for a full hour until we heard the distant rumble of the Chimera troop transport vehicles and the Salamander fire-tanks.

"And then, we entered the tunnels in force."

I could still remember the eerie silence that hung over those tunnels. Our footsteps had made a frightening amount of noise, though I could not pinpoint why exactly I was unnerved. Maybe I'd known, deep down, that something that felt so ancient could never have been a good thing to disturb.

"And then we saw it. A faint, green light behind the corner."

Lena interrupted me. "A green light?"

"Everything went wrong after we saw it. Our forward scouts went silent. Later, we found their vox-transmitters. There was no blood on them, not even a single scratch. Then –"

I shuddered. "They came. I don't know what they are. I barely even saw them. All I saw was the green light. I turned. I ran. For backup! My unit followed me." They had been just as terrified as I. And they'd been the ones to stay behind.

"They sacrificed themselves to seal one of the entrances. I escaped alive."

A numb silence followed my final sentence. Lena was the one to break it.

"So I was right. This is a Tomb World."

I turned to stare at her. "What?"

"The source of that green light is an ancient race called the Necrons. They've lain dormant for aeons – but lately, for whatever reason, more and more of them have been awakened from their mechanical slumber."

The same man who'd spoken earlier, in the prison, stepped up. I got my first good look at him – he was tall, wearing a long, dark coat that extended down to his knees, and there was some kind of a mechanical contraption stuck to his face that made him look half-machine. "This method of exposition is not efficient. We aim to make sure that these Necrons never awaken."

I blinked. "What?"

"And giving the poor woman even more of a shock is more efficient, then, honored Magos?" The Inquisitor retorted.

"She has proven capable of handling elevated stress levels."

"People don't work like one of your machines, Lumiosa."

The Magos nodded slowly and retreated a few steps back, some unseen machines whirring within his cloaks. There was something eerily inhuman about the gesture. "As you say, Inquisitor."

"I apologize on Magos Lumiosa' behalf, guardswoman. Or Nix. I suppose we might as well be on first-name terms. You're a part of my retinue now, after all."

"Y-your retinue?"

"As it stands, yes. I'm sorry to involve you, but I have no choice. I need every helping hand I can get at this point."

I looked over the rest of the group, and noticed their expressions. They were wary, and pained. Some of them were wounded.

"But doing this will save people?"

"If we succeed."

"Then I'm in."

The Inquisitor looked at me with an expression of the utmost astonishment on her face. Then she laughed. Though her features were rather pleasant, that laugh was almost terrifying.

"You thought you had a choice?"


End file.
